Student from Canada comments:

"The Low Residency intensive time in London is an indispensable part of the course. So many points of contact have occurred to shape practice in such a positive way. I can't wait to implement some of the fresh ideas in my work."

Tag: discussion

Morning: talk by visiting artist Sigune Hamann, who gave an overview of her diverse body of work and introduced the ideas for a project that she and Jonathan Kearney are developing with Oxford University. They have been successful in getting some funding to explore links between students at Camberwell College of Arts and the Neuroscience and Experimental Psychology department at Oxford.

The final day finished with a great discussion but before that we started with a presentation from Hannah Breslin covering all the activities of SEE Student Enterprise and Employability. This part of the University of the Arts London is very proactive in exploring innovative support for students and Hannah explained a wide range of funding and advice options.

Next was a group tutorial exercise which built on the experiment tried last year. This lead to some in-depth conversations with students sharing and challenging each other.

group tutorial

group tutorial

group tutorial

The final event of the day was a real highlight as Dave White, Head of Technology Enhanced Learning at the University of the Arts London, led a fascinating and challenging discussion. Dave has developed a very useful way of seeing online engagement called ‘digital residents and digital visitors’. After a mapping exercise we then went on to discuss issues around ‘post digital’. Dave challenged the students to do the work of making visible the dominant ideology that is ‘hidden in the code’ of a digital environment, to find and reveal the cracks, the glitches, to critically dig up the fast disappearing space. In many ways this ‘digital revolution’ is no different to the many previous technology driven changes, but maybe this is faster than ever before. Dave suggested that much of what is happening culturally is hidden under the surface anyway but maybe now it is even more hidden due to the speed of change, leading to the dominant ideologies getting buried in the code and almost disappearing. An artistic critique of this environment is both a valid and important job to be done.

First day and lots of introductions as people who have only met online meet face to face for the first time. The London based students have been working on curating the Lumen Art Prize exhibition later in March so that took some of our initial focus. This project has helped raised some great issues for the students from the practical considerations of presenting work that uses a range of technology alongside more traditional work. As hoped there has also been a wider debate around important concerns including curatorial narrative for a show, is this a show simply to showcase winners or something to help explore questions, alongside issues like immateriality or time and space and do any themes emerge for a selection like this.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

In the afternoon many students presented recent work which lead to much discussion, debate a funny one liner. One student was talking about their struggle with oil paint in a particular painting and another student who uses oil a lot instantly responded, ‘oil is a bitch’!

We concluded a long first day with a meal together at Course Leader Jonathan’s home.